Unintended Consequences

                                  

Gin

Growing up in Pittsfield in the 50s there were times when what struck me about particular situations was not what may have been intended. The phrase unintended consequences come to mind.  

Here’s an example.  I was in North Junior High (now renamed Reid Middle school).  In seventh and eighth grades, I was enrolled in a program called the Core Curriculum. While other seventh graders, like Bill, walked from class to class during the day, our class of twenty-five spent half of each day in one room studying American history, English and civics in an integrated structure. The emphasis was on the democratic process, what it meant to be an American citizen. 

We studied the three branches of the US government, the checks and balances they offered, the different ways the House and Senate were structured. As interesting as that all was, and I did understand it, to me, current events, which I associated with history, came down to a list of names, the people I thought ran the world, Eisenhower, Macmillan and the only Russian I ever heard of, Khrushchev. I considered them world leaders.

We enacted Roberts Rules of Order, elected officers and conducted meetings. Our teacher felt this was a good way to put what we had learned about the federal government into practice in our own classroom.  I remember one meeting at which we voted on whether or not to have a party to celebrate Halloween on Friday afternoon.  What kind of an issue was that? What seventh grader would vote against having a party instead of class?   Did we ever vote on anything more substantial?  In any case, by the time I arrived at ninth grade civics class, I was well versed in committees, meetings, and voting.  All the accoutrements of democracy.  

The ninth grade civics class included a special field trip in the spring, a trip to the United Nations in New York City. This was highly anticipated.  The one field trip in three years of junior high.   Only ninth graders could go.  It was big deal.  We were going to spend a school day off school property In New York.  New York City was a special place in my house. I knew my parents had vacationed there many times. The main attraction, their shared love of jazz.

I loved looking at a photo of them at a jazz club posing with the famous clarinetist, Buster Bailey. Highball glasses on the table. My mother in a very fancy dress. All three smiling broadly.  There were other photos of their times in New York.  My mother on the Staten Island Ferry.  Images of the Empire State Building.  That famous statue at Rockefeller Center.   I knew our ninth grade class wouldn't be seeing any jazz hot spots, but I was hoping to catch a glimpse of some famous New York City landmark.  Just the very words New York City generated a sense of excitement.  We were going to New York!

The day came. We went to school as usual, but shortly after homeroom, we boarded a school bus for the ride to New York. I spent the long bus ride wondering what important people we would see at the UN.  Would they be wearing suits or flamboyant robes or colorful tunics?  I'd seen pictures on the TV news. Never saw anything like that in Pittsfield.  Soon I'd be in New York City.

It didn't take long once we arrived to have the disappointment sink in. We didn't see any of the New York sites I knew about.   We must have driven across the Hudson or East rivers on one of New York’s famous bridges but no one pointed anything out. The Empire State Building, at that time the tallest building in the world, was nowhere to be seen.

My expectations of seeing important- looking people at the UN were also dashed.  The bus left us off right at the UN where we walked, perhaps herded would be a better way to put it, into the lobby of the building. I hardly recall the plaza with the flags. The image I have for that is from my history book, not from actually being there.   Once inside we were split into groups and assigned a tour guide.  Each group and guide had badges of a certain color so we could be identified easily.

It dawned on me the tour was planned at a time when the UN was not in session so the only other people we saw there were other school groups on the same tour. No foreign dignitaries in flowing robes. Only other school kids in drab school clothes. The same age as me. With their teachers and tour guides. Boring.   

I did like peeking into the small rooms where the translators worked when the UN was in session.  Each was in a tiny compartment designed for just one person.  The rooms were along the back wall of the main meeting area on what would be the second or third level with windows looking out to the floor of the General Assembly Hall.  We each got to try on a pair of headphones.  I felt comfortable nestled at a desk in that small room, headphones on, looking over the vast expanse of the main meeting area. It was, though, difficult to imagine how a person could hear one language through the headphones and immediately translate what they heard into another language for a particular delegation. With just a few months of Latin as my only foreign language experience, I couldn't imagine what it would like to listen in one language and speak in another.

"Amo.  Amas.  Amat."  Nope.  Just doesn't work.

Everyone in the main General Assembly Hall had access to headphones as well so the members could choose what language to listen to. A classmate turned to me and said, "I wonder if there was ever a time they just pretended. Simply put on the headphones to look good but never actually listen to any language."  I couldn't imagine that.  They were ambassadors to the UN. This was their job: to listen, to understand, to make decisions.

Our tour also included a look at a cafeteria and some small meeting rooms. I have a vague recollection of the guide pointing out important art or plaques on the wall commemorating important world happenings. The main event was being allowed to walk onto the floor of the General Assembly Hall.  It was immense. So much that you felt dwarfed by it.  There were rows and rows of tables organized in a semicircle. What struck me was the additional row of chairs behind each of the member’s tables.  I noted each of those chairs also had a headphone attached to it just like the ones we had seen earlier. felt

I asked the guide what those chairs were for.  "Advisors.  Each member has  advisors who sit behind them at the meeting. They listen in on the conversations and sometimes come up to the main table to whisper something in the ear of the member or give them a note."  This really hit me.  I had thought the members were the important ones, the smart ones, the people in charge who made decisions for their countries. 

However, I’m thinking, maybe they didn’t have to know as much. Each of them had their own people: to offer information, to make suggestions, tell them what to say, maybe even what to do. This shocked me.  I am  disillusioned. This is not what my civics education had prepared me for. Even I could sit at the main table if there was someone to tell me what to say.  I am sure no one who planned this tour intended me to come away feeling the people who were appointed to be ambassadors to the UN were not as powerful or smart as I had originally thought.

I kept thinking, are they there just to look important while someone else tells them what to say and do?  I suppose it was part of that awakening teenagers go through as they move from a simplistic view of the world where people are good or bad, smart or not, powerful or weak to one that accepts each person as a mix.   As a ninth grader, I recall feeling let down in some way, as if the whole power structure of the UN was revealed to be a fraud. The people running it were not as strong, knowledgeable and certain as I had expected.  It's a good thing there was no C-SPAN. Who knows what I would have thought if I had been able to watch a Congressional session.

Some examples of unintended consequence were more personal.  This is about the time when my parents were debating a local issue. There was to be a vote to allow horse racing in Berkshire County.  My mother was against it.  "It just hurts people. Most people who bet lose money."  My father thought, "People can make up their own minds.  If they can afford to lose the money, why not let them bet?"  My mother would counter, "But it will attract people who engage in illegal activities. They will take advantage of the situation.  They may fix the races and the betting.”  My father responded, ”There are laws against those things already. Let the racing go on and let the police enforce the laws.  If people want to bet on horse races, why should we stop them?"

This went on for a couple of weeks.  It was a reflection of the debate in the larger community.  People at shops.  In the local papers.   My father's work colleagues.  Everyone had an opinion. Even on the day of the vote, as they walked up to North Junior High to the polling place, my parents were still debating their two positions.  My mother against.  My father for.  Then they realized each of their positions would cancel out the others. ”Why are we even bothering to vote?”

On the way home, my father turned to my mother and said, "You know in the voting booth, I thought about what you said.  I voted against the racing proposal."  My mother looked at him and laughed. "I changed my mind too. I thought about how you said, "Let people bet on the horses if they want to. It’s their decision. We don't have to go to the races. So I voted yes." 

They did cancel each other's votes but not in the way they had anticipated.  They liked to tell this story likening it to an O'Henry short story with a twist at the end.  I think of it as an example of unintended consequences.  They had tried to convince each other of the other’s point of view so that both would vote in unison, no or yes.  As it turned out they did convince each but each of their votes still cancelled out the other’s.

I like this story because it sheds light on my parents' relationship.  What they really were like, not just what they said.  My father could say things that were misogynistic.  He would joke about us kids getting my mother's looks and his brains. "Imagine how it would be in reverse." he would say with a wink. Sometimes I would cringe at such comments.  He admired witticisms like those offered at the Algonquin Round Table with Dorothy Parker and Alexander Woollcott.  Though funny, their comments could also be cutting and mean.  My father's interest in being a wit sometimes won out over better judgment but his actions showed he did take my mother's ideas seriously, no matter his witticisms.

That was not the only time my father's language and style resulted in an unintended consequence.  My father relished food, especially foods he thought of as specialty or unusual. Bill’s father would sometimes buy similar items at S.S. Pierce in Boston.  I don’t know if we had such a store in Pittsfield but I do remember the Worcestershire sauce in our pantry carried the S.S Pierce label. There was a store on North Street which sold imported foods that my father would occasionally visit.

I can remember with horror the day he came into the kitchen on Montgomery happy with his latest find, a jar of pig's feet.  Even with such a name, I didn’t expect this to actually be the feet of a pig.  I thought the name might be fanciful. I mean we all knew a hot dog didn't have anything to do with dogs.  So when he held out the jar to me, I was aghast at what I saw swimming in that juice. Pig’s feet! I wouldn't stay in the kitchen when he opened it, let alone when he ate one.. 

Something he ate on a regular basis was mushroom gravy which he liked on meatloaf.  He was always trying to get me to have some on my meatloaf.  My preference was ketchup.  Maybe he was trying to expand my  options. But even as a teenager, I was a specific eater. I had my likes and dislikes, a limited range of food I’d eat.  Ketchup went on meatloaf.  Mayonnaise went on salad.  Of course to me a salad was some iceberg lettuce with a slice of tomato on top.

I wouldn't try any of those bottled dressings.  Mayonnaise on lettuce and tomato was a salad. Remember another word for mayonnaise is salad dressing. In high school my mother started to buy those cruets with herbs and seasonings to which you added your own vinegar and oil. I liked the way you didn't have to measure anything. The markings on the bottle told you what to do.  So I branched out a bit about dressing.  The lettuce and tomato were still a staple, but at least I would try an Italian or French dressing especially if I made it myself.

I may as well admit to olives being on the list of foods my father was always encouraging me to try.  Who doesn’t like olives? Me, for one. He would explain how "They are an acquired taste. You need to develop a taste for them.  It happens slowly over time."  I figured, why bother.  Why eat something you don't like time and time again in the hopes of liking them one day in the future?  That seemed silly.  

Back to the mushrooms.  One night we were eating some kind of meat over which my father elaborately poured his favorite mushroom gravy. Overemphasizing his "Oohs and Ahhs" as he anticipated biting into his gravy-covered meat, I realized this overacting was his newest approach to getting me to try the mushrooms.  In a way he was right in his thinking.   Unlike the olives which I had at least tasted once, I just said I didn't like mushrooms without ever trying them. 

He exaggeratedly took another bite and looked at me.  "Why don't you try some?"   As always I refused.   He sighed and then tried another angle.  “Okay," he said, "all the more for me."   Here was that unintended consequence.  I perked up.  Now instead of disappointing my father with my refusal to try mushroom gravy, I could convince myself I was doing a good thing.  I was making sure that those who liked it could have as much as they wanted.   What a relief.

One story of unintended consequences moves me to action to this day.  Let me say a word about my younger brother Chris.  He didn't arrive in our family until I was fifteen.  By the time he was old enough to play and talk with, I was in college.  So even though we were siblings in some ways we didn't  grow up together. 

There are a couple of family stories about Chris that illuminate his personality. One Christmas when he was nearly six he had enough money saved from his allowance to buy everyone a Christmas present.  He consulted with my mother carefully calculating how much money he had for the number of gifts he wanted to buy. 

Come Christmas morning I open my present from Chris.  A lovely bottle of bubble bath.  Taped to the bottle was a nickel and two pennies.  He had determined he had $1.06 to spend on each of us.  My mother told him that bubble bath was 99 cents, so I received the difference in cash.  His sense of fairness was so strong  this seemed perfectly logical to him.  It's a good thing he didn't know about sales tax! That would have thrown him off.

This sense of fairness is an integral part of my brother's makeup. This brings us to the story of unintended consequences.  Flash forward. Chris is now in college.  He plans to attend X-ray school eventually but along the way takes a few general interest courses. In a sociology class, he has been assigned a project.  He is to do a small-scale study on social behavior to get a sense of the way sociologists study people and their patterns of behavior. He designs a study, determines a way to collect the data, and decides the following weekend would be a good time to implement his plan.

At local grocery store parking lot, as unobtrusively as possible, he takes notes on who returns the shopping carts to a designated spots and who just leaves them by their cars.  He has a number of categories. Male. Female. Old. Young.  Shopping alone. Shopping with kids. Shopping with another adult.  He may have had more categories, good-looking blondes, people with dogs, I don’t know but you get the idea. Tallying up his results, he wrote his case study and turned it in. I am sure it never appeared in any journal of sociology or was used by any grocery store owner to encourage order in their parking lots, but it continues to have an impact on me. 

Just last weekend, I was at Ralph's, my local supermarket. After placing my grocery bags in the car, eager to get home, I considered leaving the shopping cart and just driving away.  But then I thought, there might be some eager beaver college student spying on me.  Taking notes on who is doing the right thing and who isn't.  So I take the extra time to return the empty cart to where it belongs.  I am sure Chris did not intend his little study, designed to simply let him pass this class, to have ramifications forty years later.  That is an unintended consequence if I ever heard one.

For some of the other stories, my perspective has changed somewhat. Reflecting on the UN advisors, wouldn't it be great if each of us had people lined up behind us every time we needed to make a decision. A group of experts to give us guidance and suggestions when we are faced with difficult choices.  That would be awesome.

Considering my food options, salads now include romaine, arugula, red leaf, and lots of other leafy greens, not just iceberg lettuce.  Tomatoes share my salad with yellow peppers, red and sweet onions, broccoli, and carrots.  Salad dressings have expanded to balsamic vinaigrettes, ranch, blue cheese, and my favorite, the garlic vinaigrette Bill mixes up at home.  There are certain dishes I like that even include mushrooms like coq au vin and spaghetti sauce. Occasionally at a restaurant I’ll try a stuffed mushroom.  I still don't like and don't eat olives although olive oil, even extra virgin, is a staple in our kitchen. My father has a partial victory on that one.

While some things have changed, others remain the same. Chris is still my Jiminy Cricket. My conscience.  He’s on my shoulder reminding me of the right thing to do every time I shop.